“We’ve already sent the email.” Elaine held up her phone. “Extended festivities. Expanded closing celebration. Fireworks tomorrow night.”
Jolene snorted. “That’s a very polite description of complete chaos.”
“It took me three drafts.”
Margot’s phone buzzed. The email had arrived. She scanned it quickly. Professional. Reassuring. Not a word about threats or vandalism. Just operational adjustments and an enhanced guest experience. The language of hospitality. The language of making problems disappear.
Tomorrow night. Twenty-four more hours. Twenty-four more hours to find the ornaments. Twenty-four more hours to catch Caleb. Twenty-four more hours before she had to leave Harbor’s Hope.
For the first time all day, the postponement felt less like a setback and more like an opportunity.
Caleb wanted the gala stopped. Instead, he’d just bought them another day.
Margot stood on the terrace overlooking the harbor.
The sun hung low over the water. Christmas lights already glowed beneath the pavilion roof, visible even in the fading daylight.
The ocean rolled beyond the dunes, steady and indifferent beneath a sky beginning to soften toward evening. The expo was crumbling. The ornaments were gone. The storage unit was empty. And someone was threatening the closing gala.
Town gossip had been spreading all day. She’d heard it from three different people. The event planner is a suspect. She botched the security on purpose. The resort should never have hired an outsider.
Her phone buzzed. Unknown number.
You should have stayed out of it, Ms. Pine.
The words glowed on the screen. Personal. Aimed.
Behind her, the terrace door opened. Footsteps crossed the boards. She knew who it was before he spoke.
“Margot?”
She held up the phone without turning around.
Evan took it. Stepped closer. Not in front of her. Beside her. “He’s panicking.”
“The sabotage, the note, this text. This isn’t a man with a plan anymore.”
“This is a man losing control.”
“That makes him more dangerous.”
“Yes.” He handed the phone back.
Their fingers brushed. She held on for a second before letting go.
“But dangerous men make mistakes,” he said. “And we’ll be watching when he makes his.”
She looked out at the water. At the lights. At the resort she’d come to save and had nearly lost and was now preparing to fight for one more time.
She’d been cornered before. After David, she’d sat in an apartment with an empty bank account and rebuilt everything from scratch. She’d answered every angry phone call. Paid back every deposit. Printed new business cards because she refused to let someone else’s choices define her future.
Caleb Henson had slashed tires and destroyed cakes and sent threats. He’d stolen ornaments. Framed her. Put a girl in the hospital. He’d smiled through all of it. The same way David had smiled while walking away from the wreckage he’d created.
But Margot wasn’t sitting alone in an apartment this time.
She was standing on a terrace with the ocean at her back and a man beside her who had driven to detectives’ offices, searched storage units, and held her hand across a truck seat because somewhere along the way he’d decided she was worth fighting for.
That was the difference. That was everything.
